According to the Club of Rome (International think tank founded by Italian industrialist Aurelio Peccei, which unites representatives of global political, financial, cultural and science elite), the main threat the world is currently facing is the inadequacy of our thinking in the complex reality. This includes the issue of how adequately we view threats, how correctly identify and respond to them, how well we define the best way to respond, choose forces and means. If our thinking is erroneous, our response is also wrong.
There are three main requirements for threat response: adequacy, timeliness and solidarity. In order to provide timely response to a threat, its emergence must be promptly caught. That is, first, there are preconditions of confrontation, and as they mount, they turn into conflict.
We must react to escalation, not the threats themselves, starting from initial stages. Then, we will be able to talk about timely or late response to a threat. Now we are talking about Russia being a threat, North Korea — being a threat, while we disregarded those very preliminary stages. We should have had reacted as those threats were just emerging, preventing North Korea from even thinking about having nuclear weapons.